Bitcoin Visual private key generator

[Saint-loup]

Nobody could crack 256 independent outcomes generated by a physical coin fliped offline. It is 2^256 possible combinations - you can not imagine how much is it! It is the most secure way for paper wallet creation, as it does not use any computer random algorithms.

2^256 is the security of the bitcoin network, all keys are generated within that range.
-snip-

No in fact the security of the bitcoin network can't be 2^256 because there are only 2^160 addresses existing thanks to the RIPEMD160 hashing. RIPEMD160 provides hashes on only 160bits, so addresses have several different private keys. To crack one address in brute-force you don't need to try each 2^256 keys but only 2^160 at most.
-snip-

Yes, you are talking about the colission here. And here it is offtopic. You are welcome to discuss this in my separate topic: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5185726
From the point of the exact private key the security is 2^256. But of course due to RipeMD160 there is actually no need in exact private key, and on average 2^96 keys could be suitable.

Furthermore, it's known ECDSA can be cracked by O(n^1/2) algorithms. So the security of bitcoin is actually 2^128
-snip-

This square root could be applied if you know the pulic key. But the public key is unknown for addresses without outgoing transactions. And modern wallets also designed in the way to generate new addess after every spending, so knowing the public key actually useless.

I'm not sure "modern wallets" don't reuse old addresses, where have you seen that exactly?  
In fact I think people prefer using few addresses, and especially beginners. Most people don't even know they can check all the transactions of their HD wallet on blockchain explorers by simply using their xpub/zpub key.

For being more on-topic, I think we can get a little bit more robust brain wallet without using an unmemorable salt, by creating a key with your graphic brain wallet and then using this key(private, public or address) with a passphrase in a classic text brain wallet. Thus we just need to remember the drawing and the passphrase.
 
Otherwise I think the best keys for (half)brain wallets are hash256 of unique files(own photos for example).
You can keep your file in the cloud, in your e-mail box, on your smartphone, on your windows computer or everywhere you want, nobody will guess that's the key of your wallet. And if you want to make a discreet transaction you can simply send the file to the person you want to pay...
But that's not a true brain wallet unfortunately.  

[MrFreeDragon]

-snip-

Furthermore, it's known ECDSA can be cracked by O(n^1/2) algorithms. So the security of bitcoin is actually 2^128
-snip-

This square root could be applied if you know the pulic key. But the public key is unknown for addresses without outgoing transactions. And modern wallets also designed in the way to generate new addess after every spending, so knowing the public key actually useless.

I'm not sure "modern wallets" don't reuse old addresses, where have you seen that exactly?  
In fact I think people prefer using few addresses, and especially beginners. Most people don't even know they can check all the transactions of their HD wallet on blockchain explorers by simply using their xpub/zpub key.
-snip-

I didn't write that HD wallets re-use old addresses. I just wrote that they generate the next address and "transfer" the change to it remained after the spending.
You wrote that "ECDSA can be cracked by O(n^1/2) algorithms", however this could ne done ONLY if you know the public key of the address (without public key you still need 2^256 operations). You know the public key if there are outgoing transactions from the address, however in the case of HD wallets, as soon as you make the payment, the whole remained balance is transferred to new address there oublic key is unknown. So, you still need 2^256 operations.

[Saint-loup]

-snip-

Furthermore, it's known ECDSA can be cracked by O(n^1/2) algorithms. So the security of bitcoin is actually 2^128
-snip-

This square root could be applied if you know the pulic key. But the public key is unknown for addresses without outgoing transactions. And modern wallets also designed in the way to generate new addess after every spending, so knowing the public key actually useless.

I'm not sure "modern wallets" don't reuse old addresses, where have you seen that exactly?  
In fact I think people prefer using few addresses, and especially beginners. Most people don't even know they can check all the transactions of their HD wallet on blockchain explorers by simply using their xpub/zpub key.
-snip-

I didn't write that HD wallets re-use old addresses. I just wrote that they generate the next address and "transfer" the change to it remained after the spending.
You wrote that "ECDSA can be cracked by O(n^1/2) algorithms", however this could ne done ONLY if you know the public key of the address (without public key you still need 2^256 operations). You know the public key if there are outgoing transactions from the address, however in the case of HD wallets, as soon as you make the payment, the whole remained balance is transferred to new address there oublic key is unknown. So, you still need 2^256 operations.

I understood what you meant and I answered you most of people don't do that so it doesn't concern the majority of transactions.
The change feature only transfer the change of the UTXOs used for paying the transaction, not all the UTXOs of the address, so the other UTXOs and their funds remain at the same address.
Moreover I don't think the change feature is enabled by default in the "modern wallets", as I said above people mostly don't like this feature, especially the beginners. They prefer to be able to easily check and manage few addresses. Look at the transactions of people in a blockchain explorer, you will see change is mostly sent back to the sending addresses...

[MrFreeDragon]

I have made some updates of the tool - added new features and advanced options. Also made small optimization for faster calculation.

New features (Inverse and Rotation):
While creating the visual private key, now it is possible to inverse the key (all bits will be changed to the opposite) and also to rotate the key (the bits 16x16 square will be rotated clockwise).

Advanced options (Explorer, block lines, online check):
Added the possibility to change the default block explorer (by default it is BTC.com, but now it is possible to change it to blockchain.com, blockchair.com, ViaBTC.com, etc.)
In order to create the less bit key the user can block some lines from edditing (block lines option), and the bits in the blocked line will be preset to 0.
Also added the online check option. If this option active, the tool checks the generated address for received transactions. For the already used addresses the tool shows the total volume of received transactions and changes the colour of the cell.

The block line option and online check were requested by github users.

Some screenshots of new features/options:

Rotate and Reverse features (pattern used for clear explanation):


Online check options:


Visual private key generator: https://btckeygen.com

Edited: added link to the tool

[ricardosuperx]

Very Good! I played a little...LOL

[HeitorMessias]

Very cool, i ll test this soon, very interesting   

[MrFreeDragon]

ricardosuperx,  HeitorMessias, thank you for your feedback. If you have any ideas for project development please do not hesitate to tell me.

[BlackHatCoiner]

What is the difference of compressed and uncompressed private key? (importing for wallets)
Also, great work. Finally a project of creating addresses written in javascript. Many cold wallets can be created from your project.

[MrFreeDragon]

What is the difference of compressed and uncompressed private key? (importing for wallets)
-snip-

"Compressed public keys were introduced to bitcoin to reduce the size of transactions and conserve disk space on nodes that store the bitcoin blockchain database"
For every private key we can generate compressed and uncompressed legacy (starting with 1) bitcoin address*. Every public key contains x and y coordinates of elliptic curve: for uncompressed the public key contains both coordinates, but for compressed only x coordinate and "sign" for y - so the compressed key is less in size, and less in transaction fees as well.

More details are here: https://github.com/bitcoinbook/bitcoinbook/blob/develop/ch04.asciidoc

* Of course there are also segwit (starting with 3) and bech32 (starting with bc) bitcoin address. They are not generates by my tool. However segwit and bech32 also generated from compressed public key.

[WheatPrivilege]

Could the use of color allow you to reduce the size of the picture?

Just a thought based off a software I recall that printed data in dots and talk of one that could store more data using colored dots.

[rmca]

What is the difference of compressed and uncompressed private key? (importing for wallets)
-snip-

"Compressed public keys were introduced to bitcoin to reduce the size of transactions and conserve disk space on nodes that store the bitcoin blockchain database"
For every private key we can generate compressed and uncompressed legacy (starting with 1) bitcoin address*. Every public key contains x and y coordinates of elliptic curve: for uncompressed the public key contains both coordinates, but for compressed only x coordinate and "sign" for y - so the compressed key is less in size, and less in transaction fees as well.

More details are here: https://github.com/bitcoinbook/bitcoinbook/blob/develop/ch04.asciidoc

* Of course there are also segwit (starting with 3) and bech32 (starting with bc) bitcoin address. They are not generates by my tool. However segwit and bech32 also generated from compressed public key.

My friend, I want to congratulate you on the development of the tool, I thought it was amazing!

I would like to ask you any questions about BTC private keys.
Is the most "secure" way to generate a private key using the 256-bit "byte" format?
If I generate a 512-bit binary string, when converting, will it generate 256-bit?

Another thing I would really like to see implemented in your tool is the display of all private keys;
P2SH
SegWit P2SH
P2PKH Legacy

And any other, which is supported by the BTC protocol.
Is it possible to do this implementation?

[willhuber]

Kudos man that is some really great information about the private key generator. Are you the developer or did someone else make it for you?

[o_e_l_e_o]

I would like to ask you any questions about BTC private keys.
Is the most "secure" way to generate a private key using the 256-bit "byte" format?
If I generate a 512-bit binary string, when converting, will it generate 256-bit?

Bitcoin private keys are 256 bits in length. You cannot use a 512 bit number as a private key unless you perform some function on it to shorten it to 256 bits first.

Another thing I would really like to see implemented in your tool is the display of all private keys;
P2SH
SegWit P2SH
P2PKH Legacy

I'm not OP, but you can obtain P2PKH, P2SH, and P2WPKH addresses by importing the private key in to an Electrum wallet three times, with each of the address types as a prefix.

[MrFreeDragon]

-snip-
Another thing I would really like to see implemented in your tool is the display of all private keys;
P2SH
SegWit P2SH
P2PKH Legacy

And any other, which is supported by the BTC protocol.
Is it possible to do this implementation?

The private key is just a number. So, no need to make a development to display all private keys. From one private key you can create P2SH, Segwit and bech32 addresses (as you mentioned in your post).

For example, let's take the 256bit number: 4890b831f6257996f56b43f49624478515a497ba8241e64df2b13e22de14fdcf
The related WIF private key for this number is KyemX2RuWDHAvGq7Fn2e8ALLQFvq5sb41kU2hi4jsej4hdjBkBF7

The corresponding legacy compressed address is: 1JX3r8HJdgkeSqGHejMp7SPKTPXn2EXXD2
The corresponding bech32 address is: bc1qcq50ue8xudrtgltzuw34k9vtexmdcg8ly0zjd5
The corresponding Segwit address is: 3C3J1coQwWx7pJBSR37YgTmhEW6SL4kQ9E

So, one private key leads to different bitcoin address types. Probably you wanted to have all types of bitcoin addresses, but not all private keys.

[digaran]

@OP, what happened to your site? It was saying something about certificate and warned about unsafe site, but now it just shows there is no sponsor for you. Is it a domain related thing or you closed shop?

[LoyceV]

@OP, what happened to your site?

It shows:

Code:

The domain has expired. Is this your domain? Renew now

Whois shows:

Code:

Updated Date: 2023-09-25T07:42:21Z
Registry Expiry Date: 2024-09-25T02:40:28Z

I think this means Namecheap extended it for a year, to give OP the time to renew (at a higher price).

OP hasn't been here in months. The data is on GitHub. Here's a clone.

[digaran]

@OP, what happened to your site?

It shows:

Code:

The domain has expired. Is this your domain? Renew now

Whois shows:

Code:

Updated Date: 2023-09-25T07:42:21Z
Registry Expiry Date: 2024-09-25T02:40:28Z

I think this means Namecheap extended it for a year, to give OP the time to renew (at a higher price).

OP hasn't been here in months. The data is on GitHub. Here's a clone.

Thanks for the reply, but I was unable to find the zip file and run it locally, the clone you provided also didn't have the zip file, is it possible to run it on mobile offline? Doesn't matter if it works for mobile or not, just  a working page offline would suffice.

[pooya87]

Thanks for the reply, but I was unable to find the zip file and run it locally, the clone you provided also didn't have the zip file, is it possible to run it on mobile offline? Doesn't matter if it works for mobile or not, just  a working page offline would suffice.

Go to the main page of the repository on Github and click the green button on top saying Code and then select the Download ZIP option to get a full copy of the repository. Then inside it you will find the html file called index.html that should be enough to run this and although I haven't tested it considering it is an html file it should run on mobile too.

BTW smart phones can never be considered "truly offline".

[LoyceV]

the clone you provided also didn't have the zip file

That link doesn't work, and I didn't change it because the GitHub link is right next to it.

is it possible to run it on mobile offline?

It should work. But I don't realy see the point of being offline: you shouldn't use this for anything serious, not even offline. Besides, disabling the internet on a phone isn't the same as using an air-gapped device that you'll wipe afterwards.

[digaran]

Thanks guys, I did this with bitaddress as well I just forgot it, my main issue is with some apps showing ads when in use, so I turn off internet and when switch between open tabs, if I'm offline the page of btckeygen  refreshes by itself and nothing works, until I go online again. I'm using this because I can quickly find different bits, determine bit ranges fast without counting the chars, lol.

It's also useful to just enter anything as private key and hit visualize, it doesn't ask for 64 char key, before using this site, I had to add 63 zeros just to get the public key/ address of key 0x1 for example.

Other than educational use, I have no other use of this tool.
Thank you very much.

Edit: I couldn't find the download zip option, Btw, the button is no longer green, it's been like that for months for me.😉

I just noticed pooya shared the link, but I don't know why it doesn't show the download option for me.


Second edit: It doesn't work on my phone, the page loads fine but the 16×16 grid doesn't load, I can't input anything and nothing works.
I know editing the last post bumps the thread as a new post, sorry for that.